If global aviation were a country, it would be the 7th highest carbon emitter in the world, suggests a recent study. Another indicates that the greenhouse gases that airplanes spew are equal to the amount that Germany emits. Currently, airline carbon emission is around 2% of the global total. And if this is not checked, it might triple by ...

  Aleppo / AFP Syrian and Russian warplanes pounded rebel-held east Aleppo on Sunday ahead of a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the worst surge in violence to hit the devastated city in years. Overnight, residents and a monitor reported heavy air raids on the besieged east of the city, which Syria’s army has pledged to retake. Washington and its ...

  Ankara / AFP President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Turkey could join a US-led operation in Syria to retake the IS group’s stronghold of Raqa only if Kurdish fighters are not involved, a newspaper reported Sunday. US support for Kurdish forces in Syria is a sore point for Ankara, which considers such fighters to be “terrorists” linked to the Kurdish ...

  BAGHDAD / AP A suicide bomber in Iraq killed at least seven people who were setting up tents on Sunday ahead of a major Shiite religious observance next month, officials said. The bomber struck as residents of Baghdad’s western Eskan neighborhood were preparing for Ashoura, which commemorates the 7th century death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, ...

  NEW DELHI / AP India’s prime minister said on Sunday that his country will ratify the Paris Agreement on climate change early next month. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his government will ratify the agreement Oct. 2, coinciding with the birth anniversary of India’s independence leader Mohandas Gandhi. Modi made the announcement at a meeting of his Bharatiya Janata Party’s ...

  BANJA LUKA / AP Bosnian Serbs voted in a referendum banned by the country’s constitutional court, risking Western sanctions against their autonomous region and criminal charges against their leaders. The vote on Sunday was whether to keep Jan. 9 as a holiday in Republika Srpska, commemorating the day in 1992 that Bosnian Serbs declared the creation of their own state, ...

  Paris / AFP Two teenage girls from the French city of Nice are being held on suspicion of planning an attack directed by a notorious Syria-based French extremist, a source close to the investigation said on Sunday. The suspects, aged 17 and 19, live in the same area of Nice as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the radicalised Tunisian man who ...

  The Harvard Management Co., which oversees Harvard University’s endowment and other investments, just released its 2016 annual report. It’s grim reading: The fund had a negative return of 2 percent and was worth about $2 billion less than a year earlier, underperforming its benchmarks by a significant margin. At $35.7 billion, the university’s endowment is the biggest in the ...

Imagine an entirely plausible scenario for the effects of climate change in 2045. The Greenland ice sheet has melted entirely, adding 20 feet to the oceans. Unprecedented outbreaks of pests have ruined crops of corn, wheat and rice around the world, causing food shortages and riots. In the U.S., the army patrols major cities. In such a desperate situation, could ...

  Lawyers, beware. Robots really are coming for your jobs. Exhibit A: Venture-capital firm Invoke Capital just made a multi-million-dollar investment in Luminance, which is developing artificial intelligence to automate the legal drudgery involved in corporate mergers and acquisitions. The robot lawyer is just one of many — including offerings from Ross Intelligence and Kira Systems — aiming to replace ...